Word: opium
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...Again, plenty of opportunities to manufacture or grow your own stuff, but nowhere to buy it straight from a dealer. Also lots of paeans to the wondrous effects of heroin, most dating back to the 19th century, when opium was all the rage, and when kids were given heroin in the form of cough syrup. You can also read horrific addiction stories by people who've fallen in love with heroin and lived to tell about it. Support groups for addicts abound as well, as do contact numbers for needle exchange centers...
...troops from the 3rd and 5th armies of the kmt fought their way out of Yunnan province while their compatriots hot-footed it to Taiwan. The dedicated troops set up a makeshift camp deep in the jungles of northern Burma, and for the next 12 years waged a vicious, opium-funded guerrilla war against the armies of both communist China and Burma. They were gradually pushed south until, battle weary and demoralized, they sought sanctuary in neighboring Thailand. About 4,000 men, under General Tuan Shi-wen, settled in what was then called Mae Salong. After the lost army gave...
...These are not cosmetic changes. "Our foreign policy used to be based on indignity," explains a Beijing scholar. For decades, the country, which had suffered the humiliating defeat in the Opium War in the 19th century, acted as though barbarian troops were threatening to sweep across its soil imminently. But last year China scored a series of successes not through defensive belligerence but by raising its game, literally and figuratively: it won the right to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, its men's soccer team for the first time qualified for the World Cup finals and, most significantly, it joined...
...Bradby's nimble crime novel The Master of Rain (Bantam Press; 479 pages) sinks readers into the sullied lives of China's colonial nabobs, leading us through the brothels, country clubs, crime labs, opium dens and dance halls of 1920s Shanghai?where "you can get heroin on room service in all the best hotels" and every building along the Bund is "a projection of American or European power...
...tapestry. Bradby also conjures a crime boss, Pockmark Lu, to hover above this seething cauldron. "A man who makes Al Capone look like a social worker," Lu controls an army of 20,000 foot soldiers (based on the real-life Green Gang), hundreds of call girls and boys, imports opium from India and Pakistan and is ruthless in his pursuit of communists, a label he gives to whomever he takes a disliking. After Field uncovers other cases of Russian women horribly stabbed to death?all connected to Lu?he begins to worry that Orlov's beautiful neighbor, Natasha Medvedev...